quote: So what is shown on the 87 photographs and four videos from Abu Ghraib prison that the Pentagon, in an eleventh hour move, blocked from release this weekend? One clue: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress last year, after viewing a large cache of unreleased images: "I mean, I looked at them last night, and they're hard to believe.” They show acts "that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhumane," he added.

A Republican Senator suggested the same day they contained scenes of “rape and murder.” No wonder Rumsfeld commented then, "If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse."

quote: These are pictures of what Bush does not want you to see. These are taken from a German newsmagazine show.

This is what Bush is hiding from the American people.

Please save these pictures, in case they are removed from the internet.

This is disgusting and deplorable!

quote: "’The American public needs to understand we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience,’ Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told reporters after Rumsfeld testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. ’We're talking about rape and murder -- and some very serious charges.’

quote: The military later screened some of the images for lawmakers, who said they showed, among other things, attack dogs snarling at cowed prisoners, Iraqi women forced to expose their breasts, and naked prisoners forced to have sex with each other.

In the same period, reporter Seymour Hersh, who helped uncover the scandal, said in a speech before an ACLU convention: “Some of the worse that happened that you don't know about, ok? Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read they were passing letters, communications out to their men….The women were passing messages saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what's happened.’

“Basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys/children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. The worst about all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror it's going to come out.”

quote:In early June, Judge Alvin Hellerstein of U.S. District Court in Manhattan ordered the release of the additional photographs, part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union to determine the extent of abuse at American military prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

quote:Lawyers for the Defense Department are refusing to cooperate with a federal judge's order to release secret photographs and videotapes related to the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal.

The lawyers said in a letter sent to the federal court in Manhattan late Thursday that they would file a sealed brief explaining their reasons for not turning over the material, which they were to have released by Friday.

The photographs were some of thousands turned over by Spc. Joseph Darby, the whistle-blower who exposed the abuse at Abu Ghraib by giving investigators computer disks containing photographs and videos of prisoners being abused, sexually humiliated and threatened with dogs.

quote:The government has turned over more than 60,000 pages of documents on the treatment of detainees, some containing graphic descriptions of mistreatment. But the material that the judge ordered released -- the ACLU says there are 87 photographs and four videos -- would be the first images released in the suit. The judge said they would be the "best evidence" in the debate about the treatment of Abu Ghraib prisoners.

"There is another dimension to a picture that is of much greater moment and immediacy" than a document, Hellerstein said in court.

He rejected arguments from the government that releasing the photographs would violate the Geneva Conventions because prisoners might be identified and "further humiliated," but he ordered any identifying features to be removed from the images.

In the letter sent Thursday, Sean Lane, an assistant U.S. attorney, said that the government was withholding the photographs because they "could result in harm to individuals" and that it would outline the reasons in a sealed brief to the court.

The ACLU accused the government of continuing to stonewall requests for information "of critical public interest."

quote:The Pentagon has moved forcefully to block the release of new video evidence of prisoner abuse at Iraq’s ill-fated Abu Ghraib prison, arguing it would help recruit new Islamist insurgents and endanger American lives.

The request is contained in a motion filed in federal court by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Richard Myers in response to a plea by several human rights groups to make public 87 photographs and four videotapes made at Abu Ghraib by Specialist Joseph Darby that thus far have been kept under wraps.

Darby triggered the Abu Ghraib scandal last year when he turned over to military investigators extensive photographic and video evidence implicating his fellow military policemen in brutal abuse of prisoners.

The pictures showed inmates piled up naked on the floor, cowering in front of snarling military dogs, chained to beds in stress positions, with women’s underwear put over their heads, and forced to stand naked in front of female guards.

At least eight low-ranking US soldiers have been convicted or voluntarily pleaded guilty in the wake of the scandal that has sparked condemnation of the United States all around the world.

A Pentagon probe has cleared all top US commanders of any criminal responsibility in the matter. But so far, only a fraction of pictures made by Specialist Darby have been released to the public.

A lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and several other human rights groups with the US District Court in New York seeks to fill this gap by making the remaining pictures available.

But in an affidavit filed with the court on July 21 and unsealed this past week, Myers insists the release “would aid the recruitment effort and other activities of insurgent elements.”

He further states that should the pictures become public, they will “endanger the lives and physical safety of the soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines in the United States Armed Forces presently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The suit comes at a particularly sensitive time for the administration of President George W. Bush, which is trying to stem the erosion of public support for its policies in Iraq following a new spike in US casualties in that country.

As many as 61 percent of Americans expressed their disapproval of how the president is handling Iraq in the most recent Newsweek magazine survey.

Myers says he personally condemns “in the strongest terms” the misconduct and abuse depicted in the images.

But he argues the situation in Iraq is “dynamic and dangerous,” with US forces and their allies having to face on average 70 attacks a day mounted by an insurgent army that now numbers about 16,000.

The top US military commander also suggests the release of new photos could have an effect similar to that caused by a since retracted Newsweek story about the desecration of the Koran at the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The story about the Islamic holy book allegedly being flushed down the toilet, which was published in April, sparked riots in Afghanistan that, according to Myers, claimed at least 17 lives.

But the general’s arguments was sharply rebuffed by retired colonel Michael Pheneger, a former classmate of Myers’ at the US Army War College and intelligence officer with experience in the Middle East.

“Insurgents average 70 attacks a day regardless of provocation as part of their effort to achieve specific objectives,” the intelligence expert argues.

Meanwhile, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero insists the real reason the Pentagon is fighting the release of the new evidence is because it demonstrates “the failure of American leaders who placed our young men and women in compromising situations and are now seeking to blame them for it.”

_________________In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot."-Mark Twain

KNOW-THIS

Joined: 14 Jul 2003
Posts: 3694

Sun Aug 21, 2005 5:38 pm

What people don't realize is that one day they might say the wrong words, get tagged a terrorist and those pictures will be depicting their own abuses.

Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision
Attorney general shows himself as a menace to liberty.
by Jonathan Turley

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft's announced desire for camps for U.S. citizens he deems to be "enemy combatants" has moved him from merely being a political embarrassment to being a constitutional menace.

Ashcroft's plan, disclosed last week but little publicized, would allow him to order the indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens and summarily strip them of their constitutional rights and access to the courts by declaring them enemy combatants.

The proposed camp plan should trigger immediate congressional hearings and reconsideration of Ashcroft's fitness for this important office. Whereas Al Qaeda is a threat to the lives of our citizens, Ashcroft has become a clear and present threat to our liberties.

The camp plan was forged at an optimistic time for Ashcroft's small inner circle, which has been carefully watching two test cases to see whether this vision could become a reality. The cases of Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi will determine whether U.S. citizens can be held without charges and subject to the arbitrary and unchecked authority of the government.

Hamdi has been held without charge even though the facts of his case are virtually identical to those in the case of John Walker Lindh. Both Hamdi and Lindh were captured in Afghanistan as foot soldiers in Taliban units. Yet Lindh was given a lawyer and a trial, while Hamdi rots in a floating Navy brig in Norfolk, Va.

This week, the government refused to comply with a federal judge who ordered that he be given the underlying evidence justifying Hamdi's treatment. The Justice Department has insisted that the judge must simply accept its declaration and cannot interfere with the president's absolute authority in "a time of war."

In Padilla's case, Ashcroft initially claimed that the arrest stopped a plan to detonate a radioactive bomb in New York or Washington, D.C. The administration later issued an embarrassing correction that there was no evidence Padilla was on such a mission. What is clear is that Padilla is an American citizen and was arrested in the United States--two facts that should trigger the full application of constitutional rights.

Ashcroft hopes to use his self-made "enemy combatant" stamp for any citizen whom he deems to be part of a wider terrorist conspiracy.

Perhaps because of his discredited claims of preventing radiological terrorism, aides have indicated that a "high-level committee" will recommend which citizens are to be stripped of their constitutional rights and sent to Ashcroft's new camps.

Few would have imagined any attorney general seeking to reestablish such camps for citizens. Of course, Ashcroft is not considering camps on the order of the internment camps used to incarcerate Japanese American citizens in World War II. But he can be credited only with thinking smaller; we have learned from painful experience that unchecked authority, once tasted, easily becomes insatiable.

We are only now getting a full vision of Ashcroft's America. Some of his predecessors dreamed of creating a great society or a nation unfettered by racism. Ashcroft seems to dream of a country secured from itself, neatly contained and controlled by his judgment of loyalty.

For more than 200 years, security and liberty have been viewed as coexistent values. Ashcroft and his aides appear to view this relationship as lineal, where security must precede liberty.

Since the nation will never be entirely safe from terrorism, liberty has become a mere rhetorical justification for increased security.

Ashcroft is a catalyst for constitutional devolution, encouraging citizens to accept autocratic rule as their only way of avoiding massive terrorist attacks.

His greatest problem has been preserving a level of panic and fear that would induce a free people to surrender the rights so dearly won by their ancestors.

In "A Man for All Seasons," Sir Thomas More was confronted by a young lawyer, Will Roper, who sought his daughter's hand. Roper proclaimed that he would cut down every law in England to get after the devil.

More's response seems almost tailored for Ashcroft: "And when the last law was down and the devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? ... This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast ... and if you cut them down--and you are just the man to do it--do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?"

Every generation has had Ropers and Ashcrofts who view our laws and traditions as mere obstructions rather than protections in times of peril. But before we allow Ashcroft to denude our own constitutional landscape, we must take a stand and have the courage to say, "Enough."

Every generation has its test of principle in which people of good faith can no longer remain silent in the face of authoritarian ambition. If we cannot join together to fight the abomination of American camps, we have already lost what we are defending._________________"You find me offensive? I find you offensive, for finding me offensive"

m3th0d

Joined: 25 Jun 2003
Posts: 188
Location: Rijeka, Croatia

Thu Aug 25, 2005 3:10 pm

This makes me sick....I saw a documentary (it was a UK production, but I don't know if it was by BBC) about Guantanamo Bay a year ago and I was shocked - I didn't know much about it before watching it. There was a mother from England pleading for her son's release, apparently her son had no connections with terrorism whatsoever. It was very hard watching her...

(BTW KNOW-THIS check your PMs)_________________*~Peace&Ganja~*

Mech

Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA

Sat Aug 27, 2005 12:44 am

My god..those illustrations are aweful.

We truly are repeating history.

NAZI history that is.

Et in Arcadia ego

Joined: 07 Jun 2005
Posts: 2166
Location: The Void

Sat Aug 27, 2005 3:09 am

What I really like is the validations for not releasing the images..

"Hey man..you wanna humiliate these people even more? It's not like we didn't do a good enough job of that while raping, electrocuting, and feeding em to our dogs, ya know?"